THE PRESENTATION

PSA

Academic Evaluation

Group Meetings

- second year

- real-world application

- collaboration with staff and community

- student-centered, student-led

After a few weeks of being in our PSA group, we were assigned to start planning out our video. We decided to make a bicycling safety PSA. There was a school wide vote on the favorite PSA and ours was selected. By being chosen the winner, we were given the opportunity to work with the Apache Junction Fire Department to create a professional PSA based on our ideas. The fire department really helped us to create an amazing PSA by helping us gather the supplies and equipment needed to create the video.

It was a lot of fun to create a professional video. We noticed that while we were shooting different scenes some of the people walking by would think it was a real accident and they had some really interesting facial expressions.

Data Table/Results

Creating A Plan

Meeting Minutes

Project Overview

In order to do something with what we learned, our teacher created collaborative groups. Every group had about 5 people and we met up about 4 days each week. In our meetings, we were held to an agenda of items to be completed. This agenda kept us moving forward to our goal of creating a PSA. At the conclusion of each meeting, each member of the group was responsible for filling out their time card and having their supervisor sign their payroll. Any discrepancies in payroll were handled between our human resources department (the teacher), our supervisor, and the group member.

After we studied all of Newton's Laws, learned about graphing, and understood how the mass of the car versus the mass of the pedestrian will have devastating results, we were instructed that we need to "do something with what we learned". We were asked to educate our peers about how to be safe when bicycling.

For our 1st quarter science project, we built cars to test Newton’s 3 laws of motion. As a final product we created a Public Service Announcement (PSA) to inform others (specifically students our age) about the dangers of bicycling and the importance of being safe when riding a bike, and to show how we use physics in our everyday life.

Test Drive

During the work with our cars we tested their speed, force, and other variables in an interesting and fun way. In order for them to be used, as we used them, we had to take into consideration that they need to meet certain building requirements. For instance, they had to have rotating tires so that they would actually move. Further, when we raced them we needed some type of force to push them; That is when we attached the balloons (which demonstrates Newton's Third Law of Motion, action/reaction).

Community Involvement

To begin our investigation, the Apache Junction Police Department worked with our teachers to set up a mock accident scene.

Lessons

Modifying the Cars

Building Our Cars

Just as we had some students who went above and beyond with making a video of how they made their recycled car, some students went above and beyond with the design of their car. For instance, Fernando added a motor to his recycled car. This unique design element added an outside force, besides the balloon, that modified the outcome of his experiments. He was more successful in overcoming the effects of friction and gravity because he had a stronger force working against them with his engine.

Some students even went above and beyond the minimum requirements in the building of their cars by creating videos showing how they created their cars. These videos are now available for the teacher to use in future years of this project.

To begin learning how Newton's Laws were demonstrated at the accident scene we conducted various investigations. For instance, we re-purposed various material and transformed it into recycled cars. We used items such as discs, boxes, and sticks.